


Hook, Line, and Sinker

by hinatella



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Action & Romance, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Guns, Inaccurate Depiction of Assassins probably, M/M, One (1) Strip Club Scene, Ridiculous Aliases, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 00:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinatella/pseuds/hinatella
Summary: Katsuki Yuuri is just trying to live his life like a decent, normal human being. As far as normal can go when his occupation presently involves tracking down clients and eliminating them. The consistency of it all, though, goes to absolute hell when he suddenly has to go up against a cult leader. Or—no—it starts when he ends up going undercover as a stripper at that one club, and he runs into that other assassin. Honestly, it probably begins when he accidentally bumps into Victor Nikiforov, and that cataclysmic event puts into motion a domino effect that somehow lands him here.Long story short, Yuuri’s simpleassassinspy job is never the same again.





	Hook, Line, and Sinker

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate summary: a glorified action movie in fic form that gets progressively more over the top as the fic progresses.
> 
> EDIT: The lovely art pieces in the fic were drawn by [itsaplasticcup](https://itsaplasticcup.tumblr.com/)! Thank you for your hard work!

Yuuri walks into room 1103 on the eleventh floor of Azure Hotel—and Yuuri thinks, they must want to make guests feel like they’re drowning and fake, overly done bourgeois appeal with its god awful bluegreen and gold aesthetic—and he closes the door and slings his bag of “items” to the floor, removes his shoes at the entrance because it’s habituary, places his keycard on the side table, and finally, _finally_ looks up—

—to the whisper thin barrel of a .22LR Rifle pointed at his head.

He doesn’t stop to ask questions, doesn’t walk to the bar to make idle chit chat with this absolute stranger with eyes the color of the tiles in the lobby and hair as gray—silver? Platinum?—as the moon rising in the night sky behind him. In the single breath it takes Yuuri to realize what’s going on, his adrenaline is shooting through his veins as he takes cover behind a couch, diving onto his front the moment the armed stranger takes a shot. The bullet strikes where Yuuri’s head had just been, cracks a fragmented hole through the white door. The gold plated 1103 on the other side falls with a _thump_ onto the carpeted floor outside.

Taking the bag he’d discarded would be too risky now, that is, if Yuuri doesn’t want to kiss his hands goodbye. But he can’t get out of this with the single weapon in his pocket. Bringing a knife to an unexpected gunfight was never his style.

It’s some dumb luck that Yuuri still has his mic on him. So he tries to talk quietly while Stranger Danger does god-knows-what by the window at the far end of the room.

Yuuri turns it on.

Breathes a sort of desperation that’s borderline panicked. Fragmented. Pulled apart at the seams of a plan that had been so _simple_. “Phi _chit_.”

“Talk to me,” his partner says into his earpiece.

“You said this room wasn’t occupied?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because it is?”

 _“What?”_ Yuuri hears the shock thick and stricken on the other end. There’s furious tapping on a keyboard that catches in the earpiece. Phichit doesn’t typically make it a habit to use loud, deafening keyboards with noisy, distracting keys, says the constant clacking is too much of a distraction, but the sound being intense enough to be picked up and heard by Yuuri means that Phichit is in a frantic lightning rush.

The sound of Phichit working, though, is drowned out when the stranger speaks again. Yuuri wants to say that he’d forgotten Guy with Blue Eyes _and a Sniper Rifle_ was there, but it’s a constant at the forefront of his mind as he tries to devise a way to reach his bag.

“Who are you and why are you in here?”

Yuuri knows that it’s never a good idea to engage targets; making conversation and becoming familiar with them is his second to last resort.

But he isn’t a target.

Four years and eight months, and Yuuri can honestly say that this is the first time he’s been caught off guard like this. He doesn’t know whether or not it’s a good idea to answer, whether that’ll help save his skin, or just make the situation worse.

“Answer me now, or you’re dead.”

Okay.

It can’t possibly get any worse than this.

“My name is Katsudon Yukio and I paid for this hotel room.”

There’s footsteps. Footsteps that aren’t his. _Oh—_

“Yuuri,” Phichit’s voice crackles through to his ear. Yuuri gears up for the onslaught of words, and that, while simultaneously inching to another corner of the couch, is causing him to break-out sweat. “Biiig problem. Like, I don’t know who’s in the room with you right now, and I have zero fucking clue of finding out, ‘cause there’s no records of him even checking in in the first place. And the cameras picked up nothing? Like dude just slides into the room like a ghost. So please be careful.”

Yuuri takes a breath as he _sliiides_ as quietly as he can to the side of the couch closest to the bag It’s must be a mere few feet away, but it feels like miles and miles over a stretch of bone-chilling, nerve-wracking sea. He can hear the shuffle of feet against the carpets, the little tinny sounds of something mechanical and dangerous like gunshots—figuratively—piercing his ears.

When he exhales, he tells Phichit, “He has a sniper rifle.”

“He _what_ now? Are you kidding? Of course not, you never joke about that. Yuuri get out _now—”_

“Is that so?” The stranger says, voice deep, sonorous, rocking Yuuri to his core. He shivers like he’s been chilled as he crawls even closer to his goal. Pauses, holds his breath, when the stranger speaks again. “How unfortunate, that your parents named you after a food item. You must’ve endured quite the ridicule as a child, hm, Yukio?”

 _Ohhh, god._ Yuuri is in deep trouble. Past his elbows, in over his head, and he needs to get out _now_.

“Yes, it’s,” nervous laughter. Yuuri isn’t selling this well at all. If he can just get to his _bag_ and— “It’s very unfortunate. No one calls me that anymore though.” Almost. He reaches for it with the tips of his fingers while trying to conceal himself from whoever this wiseass is. Almost, almost _almost._

“Oh, yeah?” Stranger quips, casual as can be, like they’re discussing something mundane. The change in stock. How cold the weather is here in the city. The fact that spy movies are _so_ overdone, and nothing will top the _classics—_ The Third Man or North by Northwest, or something. (Yuuri tries so hard, _so hard_ to not think and yet fully analyze everything at the same time. He’s going crazy.) “And what are you called now?”

One final clutch.

A last heave that lets him dive his hand into the small zipper of his black bag and reach for his Desert Eagle. He doesn’t need his silencer. Not for this.

“The man that’ll end you if you don’t drop that rifle right now.”

The silence that follows is palpable, wraps it’s curious fingers around the unmoving space, Stranger’s blue eyes catching the city lights outside as they widen with abject _shock_. Like he didn’t expect Yuuri to be a threat.

But then his expression glazes over as he takes on a cool, collected demeanor, shoulders relaxed and all, as he speaks out into the air in a Western European language Yuuri doesn’t understand—French? Portuguese? Then he turns his gaze back on Yuuri, _amused,_ and says, “Sorry, Mr. Katsudon, but I cannot do that.”

It happens so fast.

Too fast for Yuuri to react properly.

He sorely wishes he’d grabbed his silencer, or the tranquilizing darts he keeps in his bag, because he _knows_ he stands no chance of shooting his gun when blue-eyed silver haired stranger with a gun literally sweeps him off his feet and disarms him. Yuuri tries to put up a fight as he bites the other’s hand in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, so hard he tastes rustic cooper. The man yelps, “Aren’t you the feistiest bowl of katsudon I’ve ever come across,” and proceeds to slam Yuuri onto his ass and handcuff him to the door handle, away from his bag.

“Sit pretty for me while I finish the job, okay? If you don’t cause trouble, I may even let you live. A pretty face like yours doesn’t deserved to be ruined, y’know?”

 _“Ugh, fuck you,”_ Yuuri says.

“Sorry,” he winks, “I don’t fuck with potential targets.”

Yuuri sucks in a breath. Targets? What?

“Yuuri,” Phichit’s voice squeaks in his ear. “What’s happening, babe? Talk to me. Did you get out? Are you okay?”

Yuuri probably shouldn’t speak. So he hums the message _danger_ to Phichit in Morse, knows that Phichit will understand.

From across the room, the stranger is speaking out loud again at no one as he takes his rifle in hand again and lays down stomach-side on the ground. The rifle sits cradled in a bipod on the floor.

Yuuri strains to listen at he tries to make out the foreign roll of words that turn on his tongue like a raging sea storm. The paperclip Yuuri keeps in his back pocket is wrestled into his hands, and he uses it to determinedly free himself from the cuffs.

He stops his ministrations, because he recognizes one word in the hurricane of confusion that the stranger is saying. One name. Cao bin.

That’s _Yuuri_ ’s target.

And he has a rifle.

Is he going to protect Cao bin? Or get rid of him?

Yuuri doesn’t know what it is. What he does know, is that his job will be _ruined_ if he lets this random, job-stealing, rifle- wielding stranger continue. Yuuri tries to work fast as he wriggles the paperclip in the lock.

Stranger says, _“Ready,”_ in plain english.

Yuuri moves faster.

But he’s not fast enough.

The shot cracks through the open window and rings in ear-splitting pulses through the air. Yuuri jumps at the sound and drops the paper clip somewhere behind himself. He can’t see where.

Stranger stands, wipes his hands down the front of his white shirt to rid them of nonexistent dust like he hadn’t just fired off the world’s loudest gun in a four star hotel room.

“Well, Katsudon. Since you’ve been so good, I won’t kill you. But I wouldn’t want to be you right now. I suggest you get out soon, or you’ll be taking my place in jail,” he says, while hoisting his rifle into a strap that sits across his shoulders. He grabs a harness Yuuri hadn’t realizes was there, steps one foot against the ledge of the window, and then the other. “I hope to never see you again,” he quips.

Then he just…

Hops right out of the window like a death wish on a harness.

It’s quiet for a moment. Yuuri doesn’t know what to say until he hears his earpiece crackling to life again.

“Phi _chit_ ,” Yuuri wheezes at the air. “Phichit, send help.”

“Are you okay?!”

“I’m fine, I—” Yuuri’s head is reeling a bit as he tries to make sense of what the hell just happened. “I’m handcuffed to a doorknob, I think mystery man killed my target, and I’m about ten minutes away from being incarcerated. Please help me, Phichit.”

“ _Ha_ , wow. Tell that to Ciao Ciao in joke format, he’ll be too busy laughing to grill your ass for losing the—”

 _“Phichit,’_ Yuuri whines.

“Sit tight and don’t move. I’m coming.”

 

 

✂

Celestino did not, in fact, find it funny.

His voice is entirely unamused as he shouts into the receiver of the phone that Phichit is holding out for them, on speaker.

 _“Yuuri! What do you_ mean _our target was killed? You’re supposed to work quickly! Get to him first! Please don’t be so sloppy next time!”_

And Yuuri forlornly answers _yes_ and _okay_ and _I’m very sorry, Celestino, it won’t happen again, I promise_ , about twenty times during the call. Phichit pats his back in sympathy during the whole thing.

When Celestino finally hangs up, Phichit begins questioning him. “Did you see his features? Was he another assassin?”

“What do you mean another? I’m _not_ an assassin,” Yuuri huffs.

“Yuuri,” Phichit deadpans. “You murder people.”

“That’s not my only job description.” He’s also charged with getting information and protecting targets through any means necessary, which includes, but is not limited to, eliminating anyone who’s a threat to said target. But, you know, details. “Anyway, he was tall, maybe five inches taller than me? And he had objectively pretty blue eyes and gray hair even though he looked maybe late twenties, early thirties.”

“Maybe it’s dyed? Though, I don’t know why someone who’s nearing mid-aged crisis times would dye their hair gray.”

“It could’ve been platinum or something,” Yuuri sighs and rubs at his temples, attempting to chase away the migraine that’s beginning to form and cause rifts in his tired head. He needs to rest. For at least three weeks. “I hope I never see him again.”

✂

As though the universe is personally targetting him to give him absolute hell, Yuuri sees him again. Blue Eyes, Silver Dragon, is what Phichit affectionately dubs him as a joke. Yuuri didn’t think he’d have to see the man again to warrant having to use that ridiculous name in his head. Yet here he is.

They’re on a rooftop, where a private party is being held as a celebration for some big business owner who managed to buy out a fast food restaurant chain. If Yuuri remembers, it’s one that’s had a handful of pocket-burning lawsuits in the past, and the new management is looking to change things.

Of course, he’s not here for the new management. He’s here to protect someone that goes by the name of Guang-hong Ji, son of a business owner who’s managed to narrowly escape death as many times as Yuuri’s very killcount, probably. Yuuri only knows the man as Mr. Ji, and he doesn’t bother asking why so many people has it out for his head.

Yuuri sits at the bar at the far end of the room with Guang-hong’s bright doe-eyed, timid smiling face a few feet away. And he doesn’t look away, doesn’t think to steer his eye from the boy in the crowd of Very Important Snobs. Not once.

That is, until Blue Eyes walks directly in front of Guang-hong, in front of Yuuri’s line of sight.

Yuuri startles at first, attempts to move his head one way then another, and when he realizes whoever had blocked him is just being a _prick_ , he finally locks eyes with someone familiar. And the baby hairs on the nape of his neck bristle with the chill he feels.

Blue Eye takes the stool right beside Yuuri like they’re good friends and not two strangers who attempted to kill each other some weeks ago.

Yuuri thinks, this is a mistake. There’s no way he recognizes him. After all, that hotel room had been dark and Yuuri is average in terms of appearance because that’s what he needs in order to sneak through crowded spaces.

“Hello there,” Blue Eyes greets. “I thought I’d never see you again, but I can’t say that I’m disappointed. Things will be more interesting this way.”

Stalling by taking a sip of champagne, Yuuri’s eyes scan over the other’s form—same gray-platinum-whatever hair, same stark, icy eyes, same tall figure that’s placed in a different sort of attire. Burgundy suit. Fitted. Inciting. Oh, so conspicuous.

When Yuuri sets his half-empty flute down, he says, “What are you doing here? Going to steal another one of my kills?”

“Oh? Is _that_ what you were there for?”

Yuuri takes a sip, murmurs into the rim. “...No.”

Blue Eyes laughs. A low, spine-tingling thing that makes Yuuri fog up his glasses. (God, he’s being pitiful.) “I didn’t pin you as the type of person who was capable. You certainly surprised me. That’s deadly.”

“You, on the other hand, stick out like it’s your business to.”

“I’m the type who likes to make good first and last impressions,” Blue Eye says, gaze shimmering, not letting up as he stares at Yuuri, commanding Yuuri to look at nothing else but him. Commands the entire room, even. And that, too, is deadly.

Yuuri spares a quick glance out into the crowd to be certain that Guang-hong is still okay. He’s speaking with his father. Good. Yuuri needs to get away from Blue Eyed Stranger now if he doesn’t want to endure another rare lecture from Celestino about getting paid and keeping his job.

“By the way, beautiful,” Blue Eyes says, tapping a pale finger to his pink, pink lips. “I can’t seem to remember your name.” The forgetful type. Very good to know. “I do recall it being something funny. It made me and my associate laugh, that’s for sure. I remember you being a biter, too.”

Hell if Yuuri remembers. That was about four jobs ago, and he uses a different alias every time in case the situation calls for one. Some are recycled even. But Yuuri definitely doesn’t remember what name he’d used. So instead of answering, he counters with, “I don’t even know yours.” Pouts his lips, bats his eyes in the way Phichit tells him makes people _weak_ , and continues, “That isn’t very fair. Tell me yours first, and I’ll tell you mine.”

“Boris Romanoff.”

Yuuri nearly chokes on his champagne from the sudden laugh that tears itself from his throat. That’s fake, has to be. It doesn’t fit this man at all. “Did you rip that one from Marvel?”

“Kind of, sort of,” Blue Eyes—because Yuuri absolutely refuses to call him _Boris_ —shrugs. “I told you mine, you tell me yours.”

“Nah.”

“That’s not the deal you made.”

“That’s not really your name.”

He shrugs again, a full defeated gesture with his arms, as he turns in the stool to stand. “You’ve got me there.” He checks the watch on his wrist and hums. “I’ve got somewhere to be. I’ll see you around, Katsudon.” He winks.

Yuuri flushes.

Screams silently into his now empty flute that he doesn’t remember emptying in the first place.

Something in the back of his mind tells him that he should move too, and he does.

 

Blue Eyes’s target was Mr. Ji and his son. Yuuri’s job is to dispose of anyone who threatens their safety. Plain and simply, that means to kill.

Yuuri finds him perched on a balcony, sniper rifle pointed into the crowd, and he has the upper hand this time, the element of surprise, sneaks in like a wisp and points the cold barrel of his gun to the back of Blue Eyes’s head.

Yuuri lets him go with a warning. It’s against protocol, but Celestino doesn’t have to know.

_“Don’t show your face anywhere near me again, Blue Eyes.”_

✂

“Oh, my god, _Yuuri_ ,” Phichit tells him, because Yuuri can’t hide things from Phichit. And his friend and work partner _knows_ when Yuuri is hiding things, anyway. (The earpiece doesn’t help him keep secrets, either.) “What the fuck. What if he sees you again? What if you get attached?”

“This was just a coincidence,” Yuuri assures him. “I won’t see him again.”

✂

They meet again, and Yuuri is not finding this joke the universe is trying to pull funny. _Ha, ha, hilarious, kindly stop now_.

Yuuri is posing as security intel at a casino, and he needs to get to the Chairman of the Board of Directors and COO because they’re after the CEO’s position. Yuuri doesn’t get this rash means to an end, but it isn’t his place to judge when he has a knife on his person and a gun, just in case.

And of course, Blue Eyes is there. Yuuri goes exactly five jobs without seeing him, expects that time at the party to be the last, but no. That isn’t the case.

It isn’t a joke that Yuuri’s laughing at, yet he kind of wants to laugh till he cries as he watches Blue Eyes walk past, winking at Yuuri like he’s _mocking_ him, clad in the all black security uniform, the same thing Yuuri’s wearing, only _better_ in every way. Literally. He has the words _Chief of Security_ in blatant white on his shirt and Yuuri curses.

Curses the fact the that he can’t move.

Curses the fact that Blue Eyes is going to steal another one of his kills, and Yuuri won’t get paid this time.

Curses because, through the tornado turmoil in his head right now, the one offhanded thought that surprises him most is the fact that he can’t deny how _fucking good_ the other looks in uniform.

Yuuri tries not to cry often, but he definitely wants to cry now.

✂

Celestino yells. Again.

Phichit gives him a _look_ while telling him, “Never gonna see him again, huh?”

“Shut up, Phichit.”

✂

They clash again. And again. And again and again and again.

By the eighth time, when they’re suddenly face to face in the lobby of a hotel, Yuuri’s jaded, like he’s met Blue Eyes everyday for five years. (It certainly feels that way, ignoring the fact that Yuuri doesn’t actually know his name yet.)

“You know,” Yuuri starts. They’re near the quaint lobby, hidden in a recess in the wall, away from prying eyes and curious gazes. “I can’t go on a job without expecting to see you there anymore.”

“I’m not surprised,” Blue Eyes starts, smirk on his lips like Yuuri said something humorous. But Yuuri isn’t joking. He’s kind of frustrated, actually. This guy is single-handedly ruining Yuuri’s livelihood, crushing his numbers, making him sink to the ground. But Yuuri is probably doing the same to him, too: getting in his way when he doesn’t ask for it; stealing his targets from underneath his nose. So maybe the feelings are mutual. “I’m told that I leave quite the impression on people.”

Yuuri quirks an eyebrow before replying. “Doesn’t that make you a bad assassin?”

“Perhaps,” he says, conversationally, nonchalant, as his fingers ghosts over the lapels of the blue suit jacket that Yuuri has on. “But it also means that I’m very good at catching a cute spy’s eye.”

Both eyebrows go up this time in absolute disbelief, and Yuuri’s mouth opens in awe before he asks, “Are you _flirting_ with me?” Yuuri’s earpiece is on, and he knows that Phichit is listening in on this, and he gets the feeling that Phichit will be bringing this conversation up for _weeks_. It’ll be their new conversation starter, and Yuuri doesn’t look forward to hearing it. _Hey, remember that time when—_

“I couldn’t be more obvious if I were to sit here and write a soliloquy about the color of your eyes,” he says, and Yuuri momentarily forgets what breathing is, forgets that that’s something he has to do to survive.

Forgets that he has a job to do, and he needs to concentrate on _that_ , rather than getting swept up in blue eyes and sharp faces and lean bodies and floral cologne.

“That’s nice, but I don’t date people who’s name I don’t know. What ridiculous name is it this time?”

“Binktop,” he replies without a second thought. Yuuri nearly laughs out loud, but he reins it in, because he needs to be discreet.

“Well, Binktop,” Yuuri says, and he can’t believe he’s saying it with a straight face. An amazing feat. Deserving of some kind of award. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too….” Blue Eyes— _Binktop_ —pauses to urge Yuuri to jump in, and Yuuri doesn’t have a prepared name this time because this is a simple case of retrieving information from the safe of a building a few block away, and he doesn’t expect to meet anyone along the way.

Then again, he didn’t account for meeting with this man, who keeps Yuuri on his toes whenever they run into each other.

Yuuri half suspects that he’s purposely tailing him now, because there’s absolutely no way this kind of coincidence is a mere coincidence.

Blue Eyes blinks at him, patiently waiting for a response, and Yuuri thinks fast, eyes darting across the room, where he sees a child devouring something in a wrapper, before blurting, “Twinkie.”

The corner of Blue Eye’s lips quirk in amusement just the tiniest fraction, but the rest of his expression remains the same. “Really.”

 _“Yes,”_ Yuuri says. “What exactly are you doing here? Surely your assignment isn’t to sit here and make some awful attempt at trying to seduce me.” Yuuri narrows his eyes at him. “Are you trying to distract me? Because I’ve noticed that whenever you’re around, you tend to be going after the same targets as I am.”

“Oh?” Blue Eyes leans close, really close, too close, until the tips of his sharp nose is just centimeters away from Yuuri’s, and Yuuri can feel the electric sizzle of the proximity, of being close enough to see himself in the dim reflection of blue eyes. Yuuri would back away, but he’s already in a corner. “What exactly are you here for?” he asks with a smile.

“Nice try,” Yuuri responds with the roll of his eye. As if he’d just compromise himself by giving information away the moment it’s asked of him. Nevermind the person who’s asking has a face that art historians would praise for decades.

He _pouts_ —what the _hell_ —and says, “Aw, come on,” there’s a dip of his head, and the electricity becomes a storm when their lips are centimeters apart, too, “We know each other’s names. The least you could do is spill this tiny piece of information as well.”

Yuuri needs space to _breathe_. His brain is going to physically fry. He can’t even think about the fact that he can just side step and walk away (though the force of the man’s gaze is like cement to his feet) much less the fact that that isn’t a fair trade at all. He gulps as he mentions that out loud.

“Well,” Blue Eyes says, and he finally, _finally finally_ , pulls back, and it feels like it’s been years since Yuuri’s been able to breathe properly, but it’s only been less than a minute, “Tell you what. I’ll let you off easy this time so you’ll know that I’m not out to purposely get you. I can assure you that this is all a coincidence. Fate, even. Do you believe in fate, my dear Twinkie?”

“Um. No,” Yuuri answers curtly.

“Well, I believe in it enough to know that we’ll be meeting each other again.” He leans close again, this time with his mouth to Yuuri’s ear, only a hair’s breadth away from touching, and Yuuri holds his bottom lip between his teeth in anticipation, flutters his lashes when Blue Eyes breathes softly against his skin. “I hope to see you again, Katsuki.”

Yuuri doesn’t know what to say, how to move, can’t act on his intrinsic need to go after the threat of some stranger knowing his name when said stranger is already gone in the second it takes Yuuri to snap out of it and search for him with wild eyes and an even wilder heart rate. The beats are abnormal, tripping all over themselves. He doesn’t know what to make of this.

He doesn’t know who Blue Eyes is.

He doesn’t even know his name

So how in the world does he know Yuuri’s?

 

“So, uh, that happened,” Yuuri is saying to Phichit a few hours later through the earpiece. The safe was stupidly simple to get into, and Yuuri didn’t have to lift a finger. He thinks that this is what Blue Eyes meant when he said he’d let Yuuri have this one, but…

“Okay, never mind that. Can we talk about how he knows your name and he basically gave you his, too?” Phichit excited voice crackles in his ear.

“Phichit. I really doubt that his name is actually Binktop.”

“Okay, no. But that’s how you’d read the Cyrillic letters using the roman alphabet. _Buuut_ , if you were Russian, you’d read it as—”

Yuuri gasps, a soft thing to his own ears. “There’s no way he’d just give his name out like that.”

“Well I mean, it’s the most plausible name he’s given. Maybe he wanted things to be even. Plus, the name really suits him, doesn’t it?” There’s the sound of clacking against a keyboard. “Way more than _Boris_.”

“I don’t know. He would make the world’s hottest Boris in that case.”

Phichit giggles. “Get your tush over here so we can discuss the spoils with Ciao Ciao.”

✂

Yuuri doesn’t see _him_ for all of three weeks, so he guesses the whole thing about fate is BS. But that doesn’t stop him from constantly looking over his shoulder and through his peripheral, expecting to see a flash of platinum hanging over blue, a sly smile from across a room, a sudden whisper of his name in a low voice that Yuuri hasn’t quite forgotten yet.

_Katsuki._

It’s like a secret.

_Katsuki._

A silent wish.

_Katsssuki._

A promise, that Yuuri didn’t agree to, but he’s willing to follow along, if only to see where this leads him.

Yuuri hasn’t seen him, so he assumes that that road has reached the end of some invisible line he hadn’t realized he was on. So tonight, he’ll enjoy himself, because he’s going to a club for the first time in months.

A strip club, to be exact.

And he’s going undercover as a stripper.

The only silver lining about this job is that Phichit gets to join him out on the field as backup, since this one has the very real threat of getting life-threateningly dangerous.

“So remember, you’re going undercover as Eros, the new stripper who’s got an ass that’s thicker than Jupiter and moves on a pole in a way that should be illegal.”

“Phichit,” Yuuri grumbles, pained and unamused.

“Those were the client’s exact words. Actually, no. I’m paraphrasing. But that’s the gist of it!”

Yuuri hums slowly, cynically. “Did they also outline the fact that I needed to wear stockings, elbow length gloves, this comfortable as hell clip-on, and heels so big they’re practically half my size?”

“Haa, no, that’s all me. It’s all to be _absolutely certain_ no one will recognize you afterwards. You know that, Yuuri. Now come here, I need to fix your hair.”

Sighing, Yuuri plops down heavily on the bed; the mattress bounces under his weight. “Do I _have_ to get ready now?” he asks like a child. He’d rather not walk the streets like this, even if the club is a block and a half away and they’re walking at night, and there happens to be a light drizzle outside, so there’ll be umbrellas and raincoats to act as added protection against prying eyes. (Yuuri figures that the scarf and jacket he plans to wear underneath will be overkill, but better safe than sorry.)

“Yes, now hush, child,” Phichit quiets him. He takes a comb and some hair gel and slathers a gratuitous amount on his head before sweeping his unruly black locks away from his forehead. His tugs are harsh, and he makes Yuuri wince.

“Ow, Phichit, ouch _ouch ouch ouch—_ ”

“Sorry! Aaaand… done!” Phichit tosses the comb onto the bed, grabs the small table mirror resting atop the dresser in the bedroom, and holds it out for Yuuri to see. “Look at you! I did great!”

Yuuri barely recognizes himself—eyes outlined in sharp black, made sharper with the illusion of wings from the eyeliner Phichit had put on him earlier, concealer to hide his gross blemishes that Phichit swears is hardly noticeable in the first place, and whatever Phichit did with all of those other tubes and bottles—Phichit really did do great. He makes faces at the mirror as if testing the way the light make up moves on his skin.

“We’ve _gotta_ take a picture, Yuuri. You look so good and we can’t let this memory just fade.”

He makes a very put out face. “Umm, no thanks.” As decent as he looks now, he knows he’ll fail to look photogenic, and he doesn’t need that as some reminder forever immortalized on Phichit’s phone.

“But, _Yuuuuri!_ Don’t deprive me of this!” Phichit rounds on him, juts out his bottom lip in a little moue that Yuuri always, _always_ has trouble saying no to. “Please? Pretty please?”

Yuuri sighs, long suffering, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Fiiine. But just one.”

 

The music. Is loud.

The _pop pop_ popping in his ears is louder.

The way Phichit has to scream despite the fact that they’re towards the back, standing next to each other and all, is loudest of all.

Yuuri isn’t looking forward to this in the slightest. The smell of lingering sweat and alcohol and general debauchery makes Yuuri’s skin crawl a little, and it’s dark as hell, but at the very least, Yuuri isn’t expected to go out into the sketchy sea of people.

“I’m going to go and stake out the crowd!” Phichit yells. “You check in the back before you have to go on, then scout out from above when you’re on stage. You remember what the target’s face looks like, right?”

Yuuri shouts back, “Yeah!” and Phichit nods once, pats Yuuri on the shoulder, gives him a thumbs up, and disappears to some doors that probably leads to the main area where all the people are. When he opens the doors, the music hits him like a vicious sound wave that could knock Yuuri off his feet and onto his ass. Yuuri is suddenly very glad he doesn’t need to be in Phichit’s place.

Now, all he has to do is search the back rooms here, then dance on and round a metal pole (which is something he’d never thought he’d have to do after taking those pole dancing classes with Phichit as a joke all those years ago), all while searching the crowd for a bald male with graying eyes and a stern disposition that can slice a person in half with a single look. Easy enough.

It would be even easier, if the target weren’t some high profile person who travels with enough security and bodyguards to mimic the Great Wall. Nothing that Yuuri can’t handle, though.

He removes his coat, and he’s about set into the hallway lined with rooms in the back when he hears someone calls his name.

But, _no_ , he isn’t going by his own name tonight, so that can’t be right. Yuuri thinks it’s Phichit, but the voice doesn’t sound right. It’s lower, smoother, a touch familiar…

“Oh, my god, _why_ ,” Yuuri sighs, spinning in place. His eyes are closed. He hopes that when he opens them, the person he suspects is there isn’t actually there.

Slow, slow, slowly, Yuuri lifts his eyelids, nose all scrunched, like he’s afraid of what he’ll find…

There’s no one there.

Yuuri sighs in relief. He must be imagining things. Two months of this has really gotten to his head.

Shoulders squared and fists clenched, Yuuri turns back towards the hallway…

and directly into the chest of a stranger.

Yuuri looks up and—no, not a stranger—

_him._

He squeaks with the shock of it, and the current bane of his existence holds Yuuri’s mouth with his hands to quiet him.

Cautiously, like moving through water, he removes his hand from Yuuri’s mouth and raises his thin white eyebrows that match the white of his hair, and he says, “Yuuri?”

Yuuri bristles like he’s being zapped, electric shock through the spine; his hair feels singed. But he remembers that, for whatever reason, _he_ knows, and Yuuri doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. Then again, Yuuri knows a piece of vulnerable information, too, so the fear seeps out of his shoulders.

That’s assuming the hint was real and not some red herring.

So Yuuri chances it, forms his lips around the words he’d never thought he’d be saying, and it feels weird and unusual against his tongue. “Victor…?”

When Victor smiles, it’s like catching fire. A slow thing that flickers in the wind and suddenly—a blaze. Inferno. Infectious. But Yuuri isn’t smiling. He’s too nervous, too on edge, because he can’t for the life of him figure out why this _keeps happening_.

“Ah,” he says, eyeing Yuuri up and down. Yuuri feels woefully underdressed in this ‘scantily clad police office’ outfit. But, Yuuri realizes with a start, Victor is dressed in tight clothing too, midriff bared for the world to see. And his abs look really great; Yuuri bets they feel kind of nice too— “So you figured it out.”

Yuuri scoffs. “It wasn’t very hard to figure out. You basically gave it away, which is, by the way, kind of dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” Victor smiles, “But you haven’t struck me as the type to make me regret it yet.”

Yuuri wants to roll his eyes and ask if that’s supposed to be a challenge, but he has things to do, rooms to check, places to be that are not here. He finally manages to get into the hallway—low light, dingy, reeking of x-rated things—and Victor is following him. While he’s there, Yuuri figures he may as well get answers.

“How do you know my name?”

“I work with some very talented people,” Victor shrugs. “That, and you told it to me that night on that cruise ship. You also called me ‘Phichit’. I’m pretty sure you must’ve been high from pain killers.”

Yuuri groans to himself, pressing his face to his hand while he uses the other to open a room to check inside (nothing but a couch, a pole, and a single pair of underwear. Right). “It wasn’t pain killers.” They were motion sickness pills. He fights the urge to hang his head in his hands and hide. “I can’t believe I did that.”

He checks another room. And another. Still nothing.

“Since we actually know each other’s names, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

Another room. Same thing. The target must not be here.

“I’m not going to tell you anything, because I don’t know you.”

“Well then, why don’t I chance a guess?” Yuuri actually rolls his eyes this time as he makes his way back to the backstage area, keeping his head down when he passes workers along the way. “You’re here to search for Jacob Saunders because multiple people are after his assets. You know that he frequents this particular club on Saturday nights, usually with a guard or two, because a close partner of his owns the place and promises him free drinks. Shall I keep going?”

Yuuri doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to; Victor looks self satisfied. Yuuri turns on his heels, nearly trips in them, and asks, “What do you want, Victor?”

“Considering we see so much of each other,” he starts, leaning close, doesn’t have to bend when the heels make Yuuri the same height as him (Yuuri wonders how he hasn’t fallen on his face yet). “I was thinking we can work together this time. Split our earnings.”

Yuuri raises his eyebrows, blinks a few times, stares at Victor’s earnest expression and tiny smile. “And why would I agree with that?”

“Because, _Yuu_ ri,” oh, he didn’t know his name had the ability to sound so good; it’s like a song, “it would give me the excuse of seeing you again. Without the urgent pretense of this,” he gestures vaguely, but Yuuri gets it.

Still, that isn’t a good enough reason.

Victor must see it in his eyes that Yuuri is going to decline, so he adds, “I _won’t_ spill about your ambiguously dubious escapades to anyone who’ll care to listen.”

Yuuri eyes him, studies the sharpness of his face and the blues of his eyes and the playfulness of his smirk, and he says, “You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t.” A pause. “Or would I?”

Yuuri will probably need an optometrist with the way he rolls his eyes hard in exasperation.

 

To say that this was a mistake would be a gross understatement.

Yuuri regrets everything, and he’s quite possibly going to get killed over this. It starts when he steps behind the curtains that leads to the raised platforms, and there’s eyes _eyes eyes_ everywhere, and Yuuri realizes how bad this is because he wasn’t made for this, to have at least a million pair of eyes piercing and parsing his body like there’s secrets there to find. He nearly runs back stage again before he spots Phichit in the crowd who gestures with his hands and flashes him a smile that puts all of the nauseating strobe lights to shame.

 _Okay_ , Yuuri thinks. _Okay, okay, okay_. Just go through the motions. Look from your high vantage point.

He’s probably awful, stilted, stiff limbs and awkward movements, but that all comes secondary to the task at hand. Sweeping his eyes across the drastically changing lights and wave-like crowd feels impossible, but it _should_ be easier if the guy’s description is accurate. All Yuuri has to do is look for the stark shine of a man’s head.

But there’s nothing.

Nothing, until he looks up, and realizes the little detail that he’d forgot this entire time. This is a two story building, there’s balconies, the target is right there, and Phichit was trying to tell him that he’s _right there._

Yuuri nearly doesn’t catch his hand on the pole in time for a French Brass Monkey pose. He turns to where he’d last seen Phichit, but he’s gone, and Victor is nowhere in sight, and Yuuri wants to _leave_ so he can get this over with.

He gets his wish, when unmitigated chaos starts in the form of a literal fire at the bar. The crowd seems to simultaneously turn towards it and cheer in all their drunk glory. The fire gets bigger, they cheer louder. Bigger still, it licks the ceiling, and then—

The sprinkler system turns on.

Just what Yuuri needs to slip away and find Phichit.

Not what he needs, when he slips on the platform because his heels weren’t made to walk on water.

By some miracle, as if the universe is finally smiling down on him after months of torment, Yuuri fails into the waiting arms of…

“Victor,” he gasps, wet and warbles, mouth full of water. He’s drenched. “Did you start that fire?”

“I said I’d cause a distraction, didn’t I?” he slurs.

Yuuri squints at him. “Are you _drunk?_ ”

“No,” Victor says drunkenly. He’s missing his shirt and his shoes. Yuuri can feel the press of his chest against his heated skin. “The bartender wouldn’t let me sit there unless I was buying anything, so…”

“Unbelievable.” Yuuri picks himself up and kicks off his heels, then grabs Victor roughly by the arm towards what he hopes are some stairs. But there’s bodies running at over the place and it’s a little hard to see in the blur of it.

“S fine, _Yuuuri_ , My associate will help.”

“Your what now?”

“Ass. Ociate.”

Yuuri doesn’t stop to ask Victor what he means because he’s finally found Phichit attempting to scale a wall with nothing but rope, nails, and a single misplaced shoe that isn’t his own. “Phi!”

“Ayyye!” Phichit calls from over the loud sounds that are still present in the large room. The added rush of water that hasn’t stopped yet makes things harder to hear. “We gotta use this conveniently placed distraction to our advantage!” He seems to notice Victor for the first time, and his smile grows brighter. “You found him!”

“He’s drunk!”

Phichit slides down the rope, because climbing isn’t working, and points finger guns at Victor. _“Ayyye!”_

“Is this the infamous Phichit?” Victor asks.

Letting go of Victor’s hand, Yuuri ignores him in favor of yelling at Phichit, “We need to go upstairs at catch our target before he leaves the building.”

“Well, duh, Captain State the Obvious.”

“Just give me the gun, you ass.”

“That’s _lovable ass_ to you,” Phichit corrects, handing Yuuri his pistol and silencer. “I’ll go this way, with the grapple hooker this time, and you go to the back with Blue Eyes White Dragon. Seeya!”

Yuuri takes Victor’s arm and makes a beeline for the backstage area just as the water stops. It’s fairly empty now, save for a few people loitering and drenched in water-logged clothes.

“Blue Eyes White Dragon?” he hears Victor ask. “Is that your code name for me? That’s adorable. Mine for you is,” he turns Yuuri around—Yuuri almost slips _again_ —to whisper in an unnecessarily low voice that does things to Yuuri’s insides, “ _Lovely Little Mouse_.”

It takes all of his willpower not to break out in sudden full-bodied shivers, but the cold temperature of the room and the water on his skin doesn’t help his case. The way Victor looks at him like he knows exactly what Yuuri is thinking is what does it. Makes the shudder shake him like an earthquake, makes Yuuri forget why they’re here, makes the room feel smaller than it is.

Small, small, getting even smaller still.

There’s black. _Everywhere_. In the form of shadowed people that Yuuri hadn’t noticed come in.

“Oh, fuck.”

“Well,” Victor says. “This is bad.”

“Victor, do you have a weapon?” Yuuri whispers, crowding Victor behind him to separate him from the group of six men in front of them.

“Only my devastating smile.”

Yuuri elbows him.

“ _Ah_ —my rifle and knives is in the hands of my associate.”

“Who is—?! Okay, no, nevermind. Sit tight.”

“But I can help—” Yuuri glares at him, and Victor effectively shuts up.

Yuuri wastes no time in sprinting forward and swinging his leg with the grace of a dancer to deal a flying kick that sends one person into the body of another, ducks and dodges past the high-flying bullets that zip pass his head with whiplash speed, sending two of his own straight into the heads of two others—double perfect shots.

Victor doesn’t take well to sitting like a damsel and waiting for Yuuri to finish, so he takes it upon himself to take care of the other two with a broken bottle of vodka that he conjures from seemingly nowhere. And when Yuuri turns back to him after smashing two heads together in a lethal knock out, the guys Victor handles are lying unconscious on the floor.

“Oh.”

“I _told_ you I can help,” Victor smugly slurs.

“Right, okay, sorry. He knows we’re here if he sent guys after us, so we need to go—”

“Whoa!” comes the sound of Phichit’s voice from across the room. He’s already made his way onto the balcony and his voice carries like rapids across the room. “Stop right there, baldy!”

Yuuri grabs onto Victor’s wrist and drags him in the direction of Phichit’s voice, but the man refuses to budge “Victor, let’s _go_ —”

“Yuuri, wait, he’s—”

“I have _no_ time for this,” Yuuri says as he decisively leaves Victor behind. He runs across the watery floors on bare feet and climbs Phichit’s rope line, and he takes the rope with him as he hops onto the balcony. It doesn’t take him long before he’s caught up to Phichit, whose head is ducked behind an upturned desk while shots are being fired at him. Yuuri dives behind the desk to join Phichit just as his friend peeks up and eliminates one of the guys with his gun.

“Yuuri! I found him! He’s hiding behind bodyguards.” He pauses to take another shot. “Scratch that, he’s hiding behind _a_ bodyguard, now. Jacob Saunders has no weapons from what I can tell.”

“Take their eyes away from me so I can take him out, okay?” Yuuri whispers loud enough to be heard over the gunfire.

When Phichit nods, Yuuri starts his crawl around the edge of the small room they’ve found themselves in, an office decorated in beige cabinets and bullet holes.

Phichit jumps out and grabs the two men’s attentions as he stares swinging his hips and singing, _“Hit me baby one more time!”_ It’s a natural wonder how Phichit manages to stay chipper 24/7.

While the lone bodyguard is distracted, Yuuri uses the still-wet state of his body to smoothly slide across the floor and sweep him off his feet. He falls, shakes the ground with the impact, and Yuuri grabs his arms with one hand and uses the rope from earlier to wind tightly around the guard’s neck.

Their target is slowly backing away, but Phichit doesn’t let him slip through the open window. He sits on the window sill and winks. “I think the fuck not.”

The guard stops squirming underneath him, and Yuuri finally gets up and grabs his pistol, presses his lips to the barrel, and looks Jacob on the nose. Never in the eyes—it feels too personal that way.

“Jacob Saunders?” he says. The man doesn’t answer verbally; he speaks in quakes. His jaw, his limbs, his eyes; it’s constant. He says nothing, but that’s all the answer Yuuri needs.

He pulls the trigger.

 

✂

Victor had taken bottles and bottles of alcohol from behind the bar, as if he needs to become any more inebriated. And he keeps insisting that he’d gotten Jacob Saunders.

Yuuri is drunk, but not drunk enough to let his stubbornness subside.

(Phichit wanted to join them, but he has to do damage control since this job had gotten stupidly out of hand. He didn’t leave without taking a bottle of ice wine for himself, though.)

They’d walked the street earlier just like that, dizzied and drunk off their asses, prancing through the city like it’s a carousel. Everything still feels like a carousel. Spinning, spinning, spinning, _spinning—_

“No, Yuuri, I’m serious. I—I _saw_ him. Backstage. He had two,” Victor holds up three fingers, “bodyguards. I took him out with my _killer smile_.”

“‘Kay. Okay. Now I _know_ you’re lying.”

“It’s true!” Victor says around a laugh. It’s such a pretty sound, almost as intoxicating as the way Victor rolls his name on his tongue.

He wonders if it would taste just as intoxicating as whatever they’re sharing.

Yuuri starts laughing too, he doesn’t know at what. Maybe it’s at the matching Ring Pops they’ve both placed on their right ring fingers. Purple and blue. Yuuri has no clue when those had gotten there.

“What’s so funny, _myshka_?”

Yuuri purses his lips. “You’re calling me mouse?”

“ _Yesss_ , you’re amazing. How did you know that?” Victor asks as he slumps on Yuuri’s shoulders. They’re in some corridor that Yuuri doesn’t recognize. He vaguely remembers Victor mentioning a hotel room, but this isn’t Yuuri’s hotel.

“I know a few languages,” Yuuri answers with a smile.

“Absolutely amazing,” Victor smiles like he’s hysteric. He can’t stop.

Yuuri snorts, the the snorts break out into tiny bouts of laughter again as Victor’s breath tickles the side of Victor’s neck. He’s light on air and buzz, buzz buzzing…

Oh, that’s his phone.

Wait—that’s Victor’s phone. Victor presses it against his ear and speaks Russian at an angry person on the other end of the line, and Yuuri is in no state to catch any of what Victor is saying besides _yes_ and _no_ and _leave me alone_. When he turns it off, Yuuri asks who that was.

“My boss.”

“He sounds lovely.”

“He’s _great_ , ah. Actually, we’re on the wrong floor, let’s turn back.”

“God,” Yuuri laughs. “You’re a mess.”

They finally arrive at Victor’s hotel room, and it takes Victor exactly three tries to get his key card to work, and five tries to tug his shoes off. Yuuri tugs him further inside and closes the door behind them.

“’m tired,” Yuuri announces, stepping inside with his bare feet. Had he been walking around like that the entire night? God, he hopes not.

“Don’t you have to meet with your little friend later?” Victor asks after he finally gets his shoes removed. He steps right in front of Yuuri, and without the added soles of shoes and ridiculous stripper heels, Yuuri has to tip his head back a little to look up at Victor’s nice face with his nice eyes and nicer nose and nicest smile. _Nice nice nice._

“What time is it?”

“It’s, uhhhhh...”

_“Uhhh?”_

Yuuri’s phone rings, and it really is his phone this time. He answers.

“Yuuri, get your butt over here. We gotta wrap things up.”

“Phichit, buddy, pal, the greatest friend in the world. Can you do me a solid?”

Phichit answers him by humming.

“Tell Ciao Ciao I’ll be an hour late.” Victor mouths _two_ , so Yuuri backtracks and says, “Actually, make that two hours.”

“Yuuri! Are you with Victor? Are you guys banging? What’s happening? What am I supposed to tell him—”

“Thaaanks, you’re the best.”

“Let’s nap,” Victor suggests when Yuuri ends the call. A nap sounds wonderful right about now.

✂

Yuuri wakes up to about fifty messages on his phone, the sunlight singeing his face in harsh rays, and snoring as mad as car honks directly in his right ear. He notices the snoring first, tells Phichit to _stop, god, since when did you snore_ , as he pushes at the face beside him and pulls himself into a sitting position to get away from the sunlight. Then he pulls out his phone from the pocket of the coat he’s still wearing, opens the screen.

Blanches.

_23 Missed Calls from Phichuchu, 12 Texts from Phichuchu, 19 Missed Calls from CiaoCiao_

 

> _**Phichuchu** _
> 
> Yuuri!!! Answer your damn PHONE  
>  pls answer soon!!  
>  YOU SAID 2 HOURS? IT’S BEEN LIKE 7 NOW  
>  I CAN HARDLY COVER FOR 2, LET ALONE 7  
>  _:(((_  
>  _HE BETTER BE WORTH IT!!!! U BETTER HAVE HAD THE BEST FXXK OF UR LIFE!! OUR ASS IS GRASS_  
>  _yuuri?!? where are you!!_  
>  _did blue eyes hurt u_  
>  _IF UR MISSING A SINGLE HAIR ON UR PRETTY LITTLE HEAD, ILL KILL HIM  
>  __YUUUUUURIIIIIIIII THIS IS LIKE URGENT CELESTINO IS LIVID EVERYTHING IS A MESS  
>  __That’s IT i’m COMING TO GET U_
> 
> _Sent: 10 minutes ago_

Yuuri gets more and more nervous the further down he reads, an avalanche of anxiety that collects and rolls then _crashs_ when he reads the last line.

Phichit never calls him Celestino unless something is seriously wrong.

He gets up and realizes how bad of a decision that was, because he head is an absolute shipwreck. Feels like it’s cracked down the middle and making him sink under the heavy weight of the pain of it. He also realizes that he’s still in the clothing from the night before, only the barely passable police uniform is wrinkled and stiff and the stockings have tears through the sheer material.

And he has a blue Ring Pop slipping from his ring finger.

Yuuri blinks at it in confusion just as the bed rustles behind him, and a head of platinum hair peeks up underneath the covers, followed by eyes as blue as his Ring Pop and lips so red they look kiss-bitten.

Yuuri gasps, quiet. Holds his breath.

“Hello there,” Victor greets, voice all husky and gravelly and _raspy_ and—

“Hi…” Yuuri replies carefully.

“Last night sure was something,” Victor hums conversationally. He sits up, has to clutch his head for his efforts, and smiles dazzlingly bright at Yuuri. Too bright. Yuuri almost feels like his head pounds harder just from looking at it.

“We, uh,” Yuuri doesn’t know how to ask what he’s trying to ask. He doesn’t even know what he wants to ask, only devolves into wild gestures with his hands slicing through the air, as if that will help Victor understand.

“What?”

“Did we. Um,” Yuuri points at himself, then at Victor, and back again.

Victor’s face lights up with understand, and he’s smiling. Again, close mouthed this time, so Yuuri’s eyes are spared from being blinded. “We didn’t do what you think we did.”

Yuuri’s shoulder’s slump with relief.

“But we did visit one of those cute little chapels.”

Yuuri pales all over again. His soul is rushing downward, out of his body, spilling onto the floor. “W-what?”

“We, ah,” Victor runs his hand through the back of his head and holds his free hand out to Yuuri. The one that has the matching purple Ring Pop to Yuuri’s blue. “We’re happily married.”

When Yuuri’s eyes widen, it’s slow. Almost comical. His mouth falls with it, and he _shrieks_ , just as Phichit bursts into the room carrying a tranquilizer gun.

_“ **What**?!”_

 

Phichit can’t stop laughing in the car ride over, which is _bad_ , because Phichit can barely follow road rules on a good day, let alone while trying extremely hard not to clutch at his stomach from how hilarious he finds Yuuri’s unfortunate situation.

Yuuri can survive a gunfight between ten people all on his own, but he won’t survive this car ride.

“You’re _married?!_ This is great! Congrats on your wedding you guys!”

“We don’t even know each other!” Yuuri yelps from the passenger seat, his hands clinging to the leather so hard they’re starting to leave burning imprints. But he refuses to let go. “We practically met last night!”

“Actually, dear, we met at least two months ago,” Victor corrects from the back seat.

Yuuri glares at him through the rearview mirror. “Don’t call me dear. We’re getting an annulment.”

“We can test the water and see how this goes first. I’m fairly certain this country has a two year period in which we can file for one.”

“We’re getting an annulment,” Yuuri repeats. “I can’t believe this. This is actually the worst possible thing that’s ever happened to me,” he groans into his hand. His head still hurts like mad, but the cup of egg whites Phichit handed him earlier seems to be helping a little.

“Correction, your drunk marriage is the least of our current problems. We gotta see Celestino in person.”

Yuuri groans again, hopes the entire city can hear how frustrated he feels right now.

 

“Yuuri,” Celestino cuts straight to the chase, no screwing around. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

In all honesty, Yuuri isn’t sure what Celestino means. Yuuri had done a lot of questionable things in the past twelves hours, including, but not limited to: accidentally marrying an assassin he’d only somewhat officially met that same night. This is a story to tell future grandkids.

(Said assassin who isn’t here, because Phichit had kicked him out of the car halfway into the car ride of death. Victor said it was fine though. His “Associate” is going to pick him up.)

“Um,” is what Yuuri eloquently answers with. He can’t even try to come up with an excuse, so he stares at the the adjacent wall in the corner of his eye where blown up photographs of a European cities sit pretty to take up space.

Celestino sighs. “Yuuri, what’s gotten into you? You’ve gotten incredibly sloppy lately.”

“It’s, uh. It’s complicated.”

Celestino stares at him with hard eyes and pursed lips, like a disappointed father in some crazy fucked up way, disappointed that he isn’t doing his ambiguously dubious job correctly. Then he leans back, hands braced on the edge of the table, and _tsks_. “The man you killed was not, in fact, Jacob Saunders. That was one of two body doubles.”

“Oh…” Yuuri presses his face into his hands, “ _no_.” He guesses that would explain why Victor was convinced he’d gotten the target first. Phichit was severely downplaying things. This isn’t a mess. It’s a goddamn clusterfuck.

“I’m taking you off all of your assignments.”

“What?” Yuuri snaps his head up to give Celestino a wide-eyed stare.

“I need you to find Jacob Saunders. We cannot let this job go. He’ll be harder to track down now that he knows we’re after him.” Celestino huffs. Yuuri doesn’t think now would be a good time to mention the whole Victor being after him thing, too. “Fix this before it becomes a bigger problem than it already is.”

✂

Yuuri’s phone rings when he lets himself into his and Phichit’s hotel room. The curtains are drawn at all times, most of the devices are unplugged, and the only light source comes in the form of Phichit’s laptop that illuminates his face as he lounges on the couch, feet up on one armrest.

His screen flashes with the words _PRIVATE NUMBER_. Yuuri is wary when he answers.

“Hello?”

Something boisterous and shocking fills his ears, rattles the speakers and Yuuri’s ears. It’s hard to make out what the hell it is. The weird, loud noises fall to the background as the caller speaks up. “Hello, love.”

“Victor,” Yuuri says. Phichit stops what he’s doing and looks up with interest. “I hope you’re calling to tell me you finally got that annulment.”

“No, I’m not. This is far more important.”

Yuuri hums doubtfully in response.

“Remember our lovely friend Jacob?” Victor’s breath sounds thin, barely there, like he’s struggling against wind.

“You mean, the entire reason why I’ve been banned from doing anything else and running into your handsome face again?” Yuuri knocks Phichit’s feet down so Yuuri can sit on the armrest. “What about him?”

“Well,” Victor huffs. Is he running? Those sounds are still there, but they’re soft, a forgotten thing in the distance. “Not to worry you or anything, but he nearly tried to kill me.”

“Why would that worry me?”

“ _Rude_ ,” Victor says. Yuuri can hear the loud frown in his voice. “If he’s after me, chances are he’ll be after you, too.”

Yuuri looks over at Phichit, who’s staring with furrowed eyebrows and mouthing _what?_ “Wonderful.”

“Be careful, darling. Wouldn’t want my lovely husband getting himself killed.”

Scoffing, Yuuri says, “If you have time to call me, you have time to get that damned annulment.”

“I was running from an explosion, mind you. His lackeys blew up my _home_. One of them, anyway.”

 _Ah_ , Yuuri thinks, _that’s what those sounds were._ Yuuri guesses that he’d only heard the aftermath of it

“That’s awfully tragic,” he hums. “Thanks for the warning, but we’ll be okay.”

✂

They are not okay. Yuuri realizes this immediately, after his trip to a convenience store after Phichit had begged him to buy a pack of Slim Jims and Sour Patch Kids because he was craving it, and Yuuri had splurged a bit of money on a microwave pizza, because it’s been a while and he could use something fun to eat. Even if it’s off-brand and questionable.

But as he gets to the door, he realizes something doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s intuition, or maybe it’s the fact that the doorknob was pulled clean off with ravenous hands. Either way, Yuuri doesn’t require his key to unlock the door. He presses a single finger against the frame and pushes, and the door yawns open without force.

The place that they’d gotten is hardly anything to sneeze at. It’s only two stars, and the tiny extra long twin sized beds and equally as tiny bathrooms and kitchen area reflect that. The walls are wallpaper bland, the lamps small enough to only fully illuminate a two feet radius, and Yuuri joked that, if he’d placed the space in a blacklight, they’d have nightmares for days. It’s not impressive, but it wasn’t an absolute mess either.

Not like this.

With the way that the side tables and couch are upturned, a struggle clearly took place here.

Even worse, it’s pin drop quiet. Which means the hotel room is devoid of any person.

Phichit is gone.

The panic rises like the tides. Slow, and then a _rush_.

Yuuri immediately goes to the bedroom, finds like the sheets are thrown to the floor and the pillows are bare without pillowcase. He looks behind one of the beds, and the safe of weapons he and Phichit had placed there is gone. His knives are gone. The tiny detonator balls are gone.

Everything’s gone, gone, _gone_.

Yuuri breathes a shuddering breath as he dials Celestino’s private number, the one he says is only for emergencies, the one he always, _always_ picked up no matter the ungodly time of day.

But he doesn’t pick up.

The panic rises high, high, higher still, fills his head with doubts and worries and wild speculations, and the horrible thing is that those speculations aren’t outlandish in the slightest. Phichit could be dead. Celestino could be dead. Yuuri could very well be next. He feels sick with the realization.

Yuuri tries to call Celestino two more times and still, nothing.

So he does the last thing he thinks could possibly help him right now.

He calls Victor.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away,” comes the complacent response.

 

He’s picked up by Victor’s “Associate” with the bag of groceries, his phone, and the only weapon he thought to carry with him when he’d left that afternoon, his Desert Eagle.

His associate, he learns, is named Christophe, and Yuuri gets exceedingly more uncomfortable the longer this car ride goes.

“Where exactly are we going?” Yuuri asks.

“Why, did Victor not tell you? We’re going to HQ, little one.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

Christophe peers at him through the rearview mirror, and his green eyes are piercing and deadly, like they’ve seen some depraved things. He huffs and his shoulders move in a way that makes it seems like he’s laughing in amusement. “Apologies. You’re in this mess just as much as we are, Yuuri. We’re going to devise a plan to get your friends back while taking out Jacob Saunders in the process, and you’re going to help us.”

“Not like I have a choice,” Yuuri mutters under his breath, sitting back and watching the cityscape and skylines melt away into green fields and wooden homes.

When they finally arrive, the air is cool and heavy with evening, and Yuuri had stress eaten three entire Slim Jim sticks. Christophe opens the door for him, and they stand out in the woods in front of one of many cabins made up of gritty bricks and old logs. It has the aesthetic of a home that belongs in a horror movie. Yuuri can see it now. Nobody will be around to hear him scream.

Christophe’s fingers slide over Yuuri’s arm, and out of pure reflex, Yuuri grabs it with a bone-crushing grip that has Christophe wheezing _mercy_.

He let’s go and guiltily mumbles, “Sorry.”

“Incredible,” he laughs. “You’re more lethal than I expected. Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you,” Christophe says with a wink.

As they start down the well-trodden path, the front door full of angry scratches opens wide, and out comes Victor, who’s glaring pins and needles at Christophe.

“Chris!” he calls before he’s within reasonable speaking distance. “You had better not be giving my dear Yuuri any trouble.”

“I would _never_ ,” Christophe says, hand dramatically placed over his chest. “Besides, I know he’s already taken.”

Victor gingerly takes Yuuri’s hand in his while Yuuri splutters, trips with his clumsy tongue while he says, “We’re not together!”

“But you’re married?”

“It was an accident… We haven’t even _dated_.”

“Yet,” Victor says, and the the brazen declaration of that does something weird to Yuuri’s heart.

They walk inside, and the cabin is as bland and unassuming as Yuuri would have expected. Furniture and floors slightly skewered in a way to suggest that people live here, but Yuuri knows better. No assassin would leave there things out in the open like that, regardless of being in a fairly secluded wooded area.

“Where’s HQ?” Yuuri asks.

“We’re standing inside it right now,” Victor responds, letting go of his hand. He makes his way to an archway that leads to the kitchen. “Would you like a drink?”

Yuuri shakes his head and says again, “Where’s HQ _really?_ ”

“Ah,” Christophe smiles. “He’s very smart.”

“You really ought to have a drink, Yuuri,” Victor starts insisting as he opens the fridge. Yuuri slinks into the room and eyes Victor curiously while Christophe follows close behind. “You never know when a bottle of fine convenience store wine will come in handy,” he continues, hands reaching back to clutch a bottle of wine by the neck. Instead of pulling it out, he pushes the bottle flat on the shelf.

Yuuri looks at him and his grin, confused when nothing happens for a moment. Then, the recess between the right side of the fridge and the wall opens up to a set of stairs that lead down into a basement level. Yuuri’s mouth forms a little awed _o_.

“Follow me, Yuuri,” Victor says, and together they make there way down the steps, Chris pressing a button on the interior to shut it.

The stairwell looks like it’ll collapse in on itself at any moment in a landslide of dirt because it’s made up entirely of just that. Dirt. And a little bit of scaffolding. The only thing that allows Yuuri to see the creaky wooden stairs is the light at the end of the tunnel, and when they reach it…

It’s an entire basement made up of white and graying bricks, there’s rooms upon rooms of equipment and stacks upon stacks of paper and there's eyes. So many pairs of eyes. All on them.

More specifically on Yuuri. He can feel himself starting to sweat nervously, has to fight the urge to check his waistband to be sure his gun is still there as an assurance.

“Wow,” a redhead woman whistles from behind her computer screens. “He’s real.”

 _“I can’t believe you actually went and got married behind our backs, Victor,”_ another guy says, and he speaks it in Russian. His black hair looks like it’s big enough to hide all kinds of questionable devices. Yuuri wouldn’t be surprised if there _were_ questionable devices in there.

Yuuri raises his eyebrows at Victor and speaks lowly, “You told everyone we’re married?”

“I told them the truth?” Victor says, voice unsure, with a sheepish shrug to match his sheepish grin. Then he’s grabbing Yuuri’s hand again and leading him further inside. “C’mon, we’ve no time to waste.”

“Try not to piss Yakov off,” the redhead says. “He’s in a _mood_.”

Yakov, Yuuri learns, is an old man whose life regrets seems to be etched all over his face in the form of wrinkles and frown lines. His eyes are hard, calculating, not nearly as passably fatherly like Celestino’s as he sits on a single seated sofa like it’s a throne. Yuuri doesn’t shake with nerves at many things, but he adds to the list the way Yakov looks at him like he isn’t sure whether to personally kick his ass and throw him to the sharks.

“Vitya,” he starts in a grumbly, raspy, earthquake voice. His eyes are _still_ on Yuuri, and Yuuri wants him to _stop_. “You are an _idiot_.”

“Yes,” Victor answers. “I know. I knew the last six times you told me in the past four days.”

Four days, Yuuri knows, happens to be the time Victor had called to warn him to be careful.

“Good to know you’re paying attention to something,” Yakov grumbles, but he says it with a deep rooted frown as he turns his eyes to Victor fully now. “If you’d just pay attention earlier as well, you wouldn’t have a cult leader on your ass.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Yuuri cuts in, shrinks in on himself again when Yakov regards him. He presses on. “Did you say cult leader?”

“You didn’t tell him?” Yakov questions Victor.

“I didn’t think it was pertinent information.”

“You didn’t think it was pertinent to tell me that the guy who’s after me, trying to kill you, and abducted my best friend and maybe my boss, is a cult leader?!” Yuuri blurts, gawking at Victor like he’d just slapped him in the face.

“It, ah, never came up?” Victor tries.

“That is such B.S. I’m trying not to freak out over my livelihood being destroyed and—”

“We’re married,” Victor suddenly announces, grabbing Yuuri’s hand in his for the third time in the last thirty minutes. It’s unbelievably annoying, and Yuuri wishes he’d stop that, but he can’t say that he hates the way Victor’s calloused hand wraps around his smaller one.

Yakov, though, is not battling between conflicting emotions. Just one. Clear and red and scrunching his face at the soury declaration.

“You’re **what**.”

✂

Yuuri and Victor really have to work together now. Officially. Yakov brings Yuuri in as a temporary member of their little Underground Syndicate, and even if Yuuri was in a position to say no, he knows his mouth wouldn’t be able to form any other words beside “I’ll do it” in the face of Yakov’s soul-sucking stare and face-cracking frown.

They’re outfitted with guns up to their necks, cursory defense and support items like tasers and ropes and pepper spray (“Because you never know when you’ll need to make your enemies cry,” said the redhead, who’s named Mila), and tiny earpieces to communicate with each other in case they’re separated.

And a helicopter. Because Victor has the ability to fly one, apparently.

“I didn’t know you could fly a helicopter.”

“You never asked,” Victor casually replies with a shrug as he slips into the pilot seat.

Yuuri gets in from the other side and gets a little nervous at the way the console lights up in an array of buttons and knobs in front of him and on the ceiling. Victor seems to know exactly what he’s doing as he buckles down and flicks his wrist to switch on the buttons one at a time, doesn’t even read the tiny words that indicate what each thing does.

He places his hand on what looks like a gearshift, but probably isn’t a gearshift, and as the rotors starting turns, he tells Yuuri, “Buckle up. It’s going to be an hour or two before we arrive.”

Yuuri watches the woods melt into nothing but blurred greenery as they lift off and speed away. He spends a good half of the trip not speaking at all, only resigns himself to staring out of the window at the fast moving scenery with the blades chopping the air as the background music to his equally-as-fast moving thoughts.

He sits, and he wonders how the heck he got here. What set of character choices lead him here, seated across Victor, in a helicopter, with the ever-present tie of _marriage_ hanging between them like some sort of red thread.

It’s kind of funny. Maybe Victor was right. Maybe this is fate. Some weird, fucked up variation of fate, where an assassin and a questionable spy meet at a hotel room and immediately try to kill each other.

Phichit was right. This is kind of funny, in hindsight.

“What are you thinking about?” Victor suddenly says, breaking the silence between them, loud enough to be heard over the noisy air blowing past their ears.

Yuuri snaps back to reality and realizes that his head is turned in Victor’s direction, gazing directly at the outline of his profile and the way his pointed nose and curved lips twitch and move in the subtlest way.

He darts his eyes away and looks out of the front window. They’re flying over scattered buildings and open roads right now.

“Nothing,” Yuuri replies, glancing at Victor from the corner of his eye, only to see Victor doing the exact same thing. He looks away again immediately and feels a tiny flush on his nose like he’s back in middle school with an innocent schoolboy crush. It’s kind of gross. Not something Yuuri wants to be feeling amidst the turmoil that is his inner thoughts, but… There’s no denying how stupidly, unfairly, _awfully_ attractive Victor is.

 

 

“Really?” Victor asks. “Because you look like you’re thinking long and hard about something.”

Yuuri shrugs and says with a sigh. “This is a mess? This whole situation, I mean. I should’ve listened to your warning. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s not as if this is entirely your fault. We both made bad decisions and we’re both in this together whether we want to be or not.”

Yuuri isn’t quite sure yet whether he wants this. The only silver lining here is that he’s not doing this alone, despite the fact that he’s often alone. Phichit chirping voice as a constant presence in his ear isn’t always enough to shake that feeling of solitude sometimes.

But this is kind of nice. If Yuuri is to be completely honest with himself.

“You have a very cute smile, Yuuri.”

Yuuri bites his bottom lip in embarrassment, but that does nothing to stop the smile from growing on his face, so he turns his face to stare out the window.

Presses his face against the glass as best as he can to get a good look, because something unnaturally glints along the surface, and it catches his eyes.

He thinks it’s just the reflection of the sun, but…

“Victor,” Yuuri says. “I think someone’s following us.”

“What?” Victor looks at the rear view mirrors on his side with eyebrows knitted together in concern. “But that’s impossible. How did they find us?”

Yuuri turns his head towards the opening to get a good look at whatever’s coming at them fast from behind.

His face drains of color, washes out into his stomach where it rises like bile and spills in the form of spluttering noises and frantic hand gestures.

“Yuuri, what are you saying? I can’t understand you!”

“There is a rocket _thing_ coming right at us, Victor, they’re behind us somehow and they’re trying to _shoot us down_ , ohmygod, we’re gonna die if we don’t—”

“Hold tight, darling,” Victor says in warning before he’s drastically dipping the helicopter to avoid the impact.

The projectile narrowly misses hitting them square in the propellers.

It grazes something on the tail instead, and they’re suddenly wibbling and wobbling like an unsafe fair attraction. It’s getting easier to make out the words on the road signs that are fast approaching.

Yuuri is full-on panicking, doesn’t have the state of mind to think about the rocket that’s touched down and blown apart a barn house a few kilometers away, doesn’t register the fact that Victor is grappling onto his shoulders and unbuckling him from his seat and heaving him from his seat, can’t register that he’s tipping to the left, right outside of the doorway, into open air.

They’re freefalling.

This is how Yuuri dies.

Not with a bang (which is _so_ unfortunate), but in the arms of a drop dead gorgeous assassin.

Yuuri’s eyes are closed tight, screwed shut with nails and tape and glue, and refuses to open them again until this is over. He just screams. Holds on and screams.

But a few long, calm moments pass, and nothing really happens.

So Yuuri gingerly open one eye to see if this is it. If he’s died and gone to the afterlife. If this is where he’ll be judged for all his terrible crimes and bad decisions, all of his regrets and all of his sins.

But the ground is still there; they’re drifting above it. The helicopter is there, crashed and burning a few meters away. Victor is here, solid and warm in his airtight embrace, looking for all the world like the most satisfied son of a bitch.

Yuuri’s face must burn brighter than the two explosive fires that are raging on in the background, because Victor bursts out laughing, and his whole body shakes with the force of it. Yuuri can feel it under his skin. He frowns and buries his face sheepishly against Victor’s chest and waits for them to touch down before he even thinks about showing his face to Victor again. Not until his cheeks have calmed down and his heart has stopped trying to skydive out of his chest.

“You could’ve mentioned any time between the realization that we were going to be shot and the helicopter actually being hit that you had a parachute.”

Victor grins as him, residual laughter on his lips. “I love surprises.”

 

They salvage as much of their weapons as they can from the bag that had ripped apart during the explosion. The only things that survived is the tranquiliser gun, Yuuri’s pistol, Victor’s taser, and the small tube of pepper spray.

“Well,” Victor says upon unearthing the pepper spray from the pile of burnt metal and wiry guts. “We could be in worse shape.”

Yuuri snorts at that. “We’ll really give them a run for their money now.”

“Alright,” Victor stands up and announces as soon as they’re done sifting through the debris. “Now we find transportation.”

“And how do we do that?” Yuuri questions with a doubtful rise of his eyebrows. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and at least a couple of hours away from our destination if we’re going to go by car now. I might still have my phone on me…” Yuuri pats down his pockets. Nothing. Yuuri pauses with a dejected sigh when he remembers that he’d left his phone in the bag of weapons and it’s probably destroyed like everything else. “Nevermind.”

“We’ll sit and wait here until someone drives through,” Victor says, pointing at the main asphalt road half a kilometer away.

“We’re hitchhiking?”

“Not quite.”

 _Not quite_ , means stealing the first car that comes their way by threatening with the broken barrel gun that Victor had taken from the pile. Yuuri wondered what he planned to do with it since it was effectively useless. He isn’t sure what he expected, but it isn’t this.

“You just…” Yuuri starts, eyeing the terrified and put off man through the side mirror; he’s pulled out his phone and is currently dialing a number. Most likely the police. “Why did you steal a car?”

“As if this is the worst thing you and I have done,” Victor points out.

Yuuri opens his mouth. Closes it. Shrugs his shoulders and sinks back against the plush upholstery. “You’re not wrong.”

 

By the time they reach a rest stop, the sun is already starting to dip below the horizon. They ditched the car a few miles away to minimize their chances of being found, and go to the nearest convenience and pharmacy store to buy a burner phone to contact Victor’s boss, then find the cheapest motel they can with the money left in their wallets.

Yuuri’s skin crawls when he enters their room. It’s like a layer of dust just hangs stagnant in the air, there’s small cobwebs and mold in untouched corners, and he swears there’s a family of rats nesting in the walls. He can hear the little rustle of feet and minute sounds of squeaks if he doesn’t move.

When he sits on the bed, more dust flies into the air.

“I don’t know about you, Victor, but I don’t think I’ll be getting any sleep.”

“That’s perfectly fine, but you should get some rest anyway,” Victor insists, sitting down next to him, because this is the only bed in the room. And sleeping would mean sleeping in the same bed as Victor. Not that this would be the first time, but there’s something daunting about that when they’ll be doing it when neither have the excuse of being drunk.

(The excuse of being majorly attracted to each other is probably okay, but Yuuri doesn’t make it a habit of sleeping on beds with people he’d barely known for over a month. However, Victor is a weird outlier.)

“Wouldn’t it be best to call Yakov and let him know what’s going on?” Yuuri asks. “I think he’d like to know that his helicopter is lying broken in some field. They’re expecting us to be in the target’s AO right now.”

“We’ll call in the morning,” Victor says, bumping his shoulder with Yuuri’s.

“But the plan—” Yuuri starts.

“We ran into some unforeseen complications. It’s _fine_ , Yuuri. Yakov won’t be mad at me for too long, and he certainly won’t blame you. Besides, he’s entirely convinced that this was one-hundred percent my doing.”

Yuuri feels a little guilty about that, and it must show on his features, because Victor presses both of his index fingers to Yuuri’s cheeks and coaxes him to smile.

“You have an awful habit of breaking the rules,” Yuuri speaks, and it sounds funny with the deformed shape his mouth has taken on.

“Do I?” Victor says, a lovely smile of his own on his lips when he takes his hands away. “I’ll have you know that I am _great_ at following the rules. I just alter them a little as I see fit. Besides, the plan is off-kilter now, so from here on out we’ll be forced to improvise.”

The prospect of that is more than a little terrifying for Yuuri, because no plan means the possibility of everything screwing up in the worse possible way. Then again, Yuuri and Victor went into this job with a fairly solid plan, and that’s come crashing down around them. Yuuri’s surprised he hasn’t been impaled by the downfall.

This is completely different from the way he usually works. Yuuri doesn’t walk into dark spaces for the thrill of it. He doesn’t enjoy the uncertainty of what the dark holds.

“You strike me as the type of person who isn’t very fond of that practice,” Victor says, leaning back onto the bed. His nose scrunches up a little when more dust swirls in the air and catches in the dim lamplight, and he mumbles something about wanting to shower.

“Was it that obvious?” Yuuri jokes. Of course it’s obvious. He’s an open book. Always has been. Phichit and Celestino point that out constantly.

Victor hums in response, turns his blue eyes on Yuuri to study his face, and Yuuri is caught looking right back at him and the cute little blush of red on the tip of his nose. Yuuri licks his lps because they suddenly feel dry, and Victor follows the sweeping movement with sleepy eyes.

“Taking things as they come makes things a little more fun, doesn’t it?” Victor says in a soft voice like a whisper that strokes pass Yuuri’s ears. He’s sitting up so he’s eye level with Yuuri again. “This game of russian roulette. Of cat and mouse.” Victor is leaning close, so close, licking his own lips in an enticing way, and biting his bottom lip with a sly smile when Yuuri’s gaze catches on the action. “It makes things far more satisfying when you finally catch them despite the odds.” He’s leaning close, close, closer, dips his head so he’s resting on Yuuri’s shoulder, and his lips are just millimeters from Yuuri’s ear. And when Victor speaks, his voice a raspy, wispy thing, Yuuri shivers. “Hook. Line.” (He nips Yuuri’s ear lobe, and Yuuri stops breathing.) “Sinker.”

Yuuri has to shift away so he can breathe again, because that little nip had stole his ability to. Inhale, exhale, inhale… okay.

“I. As much as I’d love to do that, I just can’t,” Yuuri says. “I don’t like being unsure. It makes me incredibly nervous.”

“I noticed,” Victor says. His eyes are flashing with something like determination, but Yuuri has no clue what that means. “It’ll be okay, Yuuri. I promise.”

“I’m not sure I can place all my trust in someone I hardly know. I don’t even know your last name. What’s on the certificate?”

Victor is looking at him, _again_ , in that soul-searching stare that Yuuri almost wants to shrink away from. “My name is Victor Nikiforov, I’m twenty-eight years old, I’ve been in this business since the age of fourteen, I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and orphaned at—”

“Okay, okay, stop!” Yuuri cuts him off, surprise laugh slipping from his lips. “I didn’t want your entire life story. You’re the worst assassin I’ve ever met.”

Victor’s eyes seem to sparkle, but maybe it’s the lamp in the background reflecting on the surface. “If getting to be here with the most interesting person I’ve ever met means being the worst assassin in the world, I’ll gladly accept that award. I’ll print my name on the plaque myself.”

Yuuri smiles, soft and a little shy. “I don’t doubt that.”

✂

Sleeping is kind of impossible when it seems like the walls themselves will start taking on a life of their own and decide to crush them while they’re vulnerable. So they sleep in shifts, and Yuuri spends his watch studying Victor’s face to commit it to memory, while his sleeping time is spent tossing and turning until he’s inadvertently placed in a burrito of stained white sheets.

They call Christophe in the morning with the burner phone and wait at a gas station by the rest stop with their bag of weapons and their ratty, mottled clothes and dark circles that made home underneath their eyes.

Christophe, Mila, and Georgi kindly points out how awful they look when they finally arrives in the same car Yuuri had been in when he was driven to their headquarters.

“You were serious when you said that you destroyed the helicopter?” Mila whistles. “Yakov is going to be _maaad_.”

“Not if I can get enough money to replace it,” Victor says, sliding into the passenger seat of the car. Yuuri gets in the back and straps himself in between Mila and Georgi.

Christophe starts the ignition. “And how do you plan to do that? You do realize that one costs somewhere around 300,000, right?”

“Simple,” Victor says. “I’m going to run all of the target's assets dry.”

“Um,” Yuuri interjects. “The clients won’t be happy about that if they’re after his money in the first place.”

Victor hums in agreement. “They’ll get over it.”

 

Base of operations is located in the gaudiest mansion on this side of the city. They had the blueprints to this place and promptly lost them, but now Victor’s crew is here to help by tracking and guiding them using the laptop that Mila has brought with them.

“I’ll stay in the car with Georgi,” Mila says. “You guys find Yuuri’s people then go after the target. It might be best to split up, though, since the place is gigantic.”

“I call going with Yuuri,” Victor immediately chimes in.

“ _No_ ,” Yuuri says. “You should go with Chris to get the target. I’ll go and get my friend and boss.”

Victor purses his lips and folds his arms, the gun in his hand dangling against his side. It’s amazing how Victor manages to look like a child despite holding a weapon.

“Come on, lover boy. Let’s go,” Christophe says, tugging Victor along.

Before Yuuri can trudge after them, someone grabs his hands, and he turns to see that it’s Georgi. He slips a bunch of tiny somethings into Yuuri’s hands, and Yuuri looks down to examine them and finds that they’re explosives.

“Sticky explosives,” he explains in a heavy accent. “You throw them down and _pwshh_.”

“Oh, um. Thank you.”

 

The layout is confusing. An awful mess of corridors and fake, knock-off paintings and old, vintage carpeting and curtains that look exactly the same no matter which way Yuuri turns. Yuuri had long lost Victor and Christophe, who are probably moving to higher levels of the building. Instinct tells Yuuri that his destination is somewhere lower, like a basement. If he were just able to locate the stairs, that would make finding Phichit and Celestino easier.

“Yuuri,” Mila’s accented voice crackles in his ear. “I’ve taken over the security cameras to have them play on a loop from the last ten minutes before we arrived, so I can’t see you. I can try and lead you blind, though. You’ll have to be extremely careful. Or not, if you’re Victor on his bad days.”

“I’ll be careful,” Yuuri assures. He wants to ask what ‘Victor on his bad days’ means, but he doesn’t press.

So far, he hasn’t run into anyone. Which makes no sense; this is the target’s home. If he’s to believe that the target runs a questionable side business in which he coaxes people into a false sense of belonging, steals their assets, and have them kill themselves, have entire groups of people to chase down assassins and wayward spies through the skies, can afford to have _double body doubles,_ Yuuri had expected this place would be filled with people, too.

Call him paranoid, but the quiet of these halls are too suspicious.

Mila guides him the best she can using a floorplan that she downloaded, and with her help Yuuri _finally_ locates some stairs. He goes down them, into a hallway that looks almost exactly like the ones on the ground level. The only difference here, is that there’s three of four guards standing beside corners and closed doors.

Yuuri takes out his gun as he surreptitiously peeks around the corner. He removes his glasses with one hand to point the reflection down the hall while the other has his pistol turned towards one guard. With a deep, steadying breath, Yuuri pulls the trigger.

The first guard goes down, and the others are in a scramble.

Yuuri has time to make one more covert shot before the guards are close enough to see him, and when they make it to him at last, he knocks the gun out of the hands of one and grabs them by the tie, bodily tosses them directly into the last guard, straight to the ground—pulls the trigger—two swift shots to the head. He picks up one of the fallen guns to pocket.

It doesn’t take long to find Phichit. Yuuri can hear his voice behind a locked door, shouting at someone to _please let me go to the bathroom, christ, I haven’t showered in over a day? I feel gross and you should feel bad._

Yuuri tosses one of the sticky explosives on the knob. The explosion is instantaneous. Phichit shrieks from the other side of the door that’s now halfway off its hinges, and when his eyes land on Yuuri, he looks ready to cry.

“You’re here!” Phichit stands to wrap Yuuri in a hug. “Oh, man, they were going to take me in for ransom, Yuuri, I recorded a video and everything. It was awful. Also, did you know Saunders is lowkey running a cult? How wild is that!”

“I heard,” Yuuri smiles a little as Phichit pulls away.

“You look terrible,” they say in unison. Then pause. Then _laugh_.

“Do you know where Ciao Ciao is?”

When Phichit nods, Yuuri hands him the gun he picked up earlier. “Mr. Cult man is making serious bank to afford to get his guys mark twenty-three’s.”

“When you find Ciao Ciao, go outside and look for the blue car that’s just passed the driveway. Tell the people in there your names before you enter,” Yuuri instructs, eyes shifting behind them when he hears the slightest of noises. “They’re Victor’s friends. It’s kind of a long story.”

“How long is the story?”

Yuuri scrunches his nose up a little. “We crashed a helicopter.”

Phichit whistles like that’s some amazing feat to marvel at. (It technically _is_.) “I cannot believe you were out there living the spy dream while I sat in here bored out of my mind. But I’m glad you’re here. Victor is here, too?”

“He’s upstairs going after the target. I’m gonna join him in a bit.”

“Mkay. Don’t die!” Phichit sing-songs as he sets off to find Celestino.

Yuuri rattles off information to Mila to update her on the situation while he makes his way back upstairs, happily free to help eliminate the target if Christophe and Victor hadn’t taken care of that already. They were certainly busy, because they leaf an easy trail for Yuuri to follow in the form of incapacitated, limp bodies lying on the floor every few meters.

He follows the trail up two flights of stairs, and he knows that they’re here fighting when the sound of gunshots mixed with shouting reaches his ears.

“You’re all _useless!_ ” Yuuri hears an unfamiliar voice shout as he approaches. “Cover me if you want to live!”

Must be Saunders.

Yuuri only steps in on the last of the chaos, where their target is slipping away towards an open floor to ceiling window. Victor is skewering the last living bodyguard on a loose metal pole with a pointed end, and Christophe uses their opening to go straight for the target.

Christophe hoists him up by his jacket and slams him to the ground with a _crack_ , straddles him so he doesn’t go anywhere, and cheekily says, “Ah, ah, you’re not going anywhere.”

“Yuuri!” Victor says as he wipes the blood from his hands using the jacket of one of the fallen bodies. “Did you find them?”

“I did,” Yuuri confirms, walking over to him. “I see you guys took care of things here, too.”

“We did,” Victor says, smiling down at Yuuri once he’s near. “ _Easy_. Everything went well, just like I promised.”

“Now there’s only one thing left to do,” Yuuri says.

Their eyes snap to Saunders, who’s struggling to fight Christophe off himself.

“You think you can get rid of me?! I have _droves_ of people who are willing to die for me—”

“Good news!” Chris interrupts. “They’ve done just that. They all fought valiantly, but were sadly no match.”

“Are you saying you—”

“I’m saying there’s no one around to help you.”

Saunders suddenly stops his futile struggling as though the declaration is a resonating slap to the face. It’s like he’s accepted his fate, like he’s seen this coming for years. But he’s _sneering_. Teeth barred, veins popping, red in the face.

“I won’t die at the hands of lowlife, good for nothing, monstrous—”

Victor rolls his eyes to the ceiling. He looks done and ready to move on. Yuuri can relate to that sentiment. “I’ll have you know that it’s perfectly fine to make an honest living killing people.”

(“That’s a joke, right?” Yuuri whispers to him.

“Of course it’s a joke,” Victor says jokingly.)

“If I have to die,” he says, and he’s holding up a remote in his hand, the red button smaller than his thumb yet the most menacing thing in this room. “All of you will die with me.”

“Oh, _shit_ —”

“Move _movemovemove_ —”

They dive straight for the open window, find a set of ladders conveniently placed under the sill—the reason why Saunders went straight for the window in the face of danger in the first place, Yuuri realizes—run without stopping, as far as the espresso-shot adrenaline in their veins will carry them, and don’t stop until the _BOOM_ shakes the ground like an earthquake and the soundwaves rattle their skin.

Trees in the yard act as their cover from the burning debris that soar through the air and litter the manicured grass.

It feels like hours before quiet fire crackles replaces the sound of falling objects. Yuuri looks at where the mansion once was; it’s almost entirely leveled, save for walls connecting to doorframes still standing tall on what’s the only floor. The basement level seems to be mostly intact.

Yuuri’s eyes sweep across the destruction they’ve unintentionally caused, and he’s realizing how _hard_ his heart is beating from the rush of it. From the excitement. This was _exhilarating._

His eyes land on something large in the near distance, and he laughs, tugging on Victor’s jacket sleeve and pointing it out. “Looks like you won’t have to buy Yakov a new helicopter after.”

“Oh, my god,” Chris says.

“He owned his own private jet too?” Victor gawks. “I’m sure the clients won’t miss a few thousands in Saunders's bank account.”

“If you’re going to do that,” Yuuri says. “I’d like a cut of that.”

“Me too,” Chris adds.

“And me,” Mila’s voice says in the earpieces. “I gave up a perfectly good Friday to be here.”

“Yes, yes, yes, okay.”

✂

Yakov isn’t happy about his helicopter.

He’s less irritated when Victor tells him him about the jet.

“This really was fun,” Yuuri says as he looks at Victor, smile on his face. “This wasn’t in my job description at all, but it was fun. Thank you for the help.” They’re standing outside of the cabin, and Victor is seeing him off in true grossly domestic married fashion, because Yuuri’s job doesn’t suddenly stop now that he’s had a taste of working with Victor like this.

(He wishes it did.)

“Well now you have something new to add to your resumé. ‘Survived a crash. Jumped out of an exploding building. Great at improvisation.’ Your potential employers will _adore_ you.”

Yuuri scoffs amusedly and pushes Victor against his chest, but there’s no force behind it.

Victor doesn’t let Yuuri step away; he places his own warmer hands right on top of Yuuri’s and stares into his brown eyes. “Kiss me?” he asks. “Give me something to remember you by during these cold, lonely times ahead.”

“Why are you so dramatic?”

“I don’t know how to _not_ be dramatic.”

Yuuri slips free from Victor’s grasp and tugs on his collar, dragging him down until he’s perfectly eye-to-eye. Lips-millimeters-from lips. Before he leans forward, takes the plunge he desperately wants to dive into (because, _god_ , Victor’s lips are something to marvel at), Yuuri whispers. “Promise me you’ll file for that annulment, and I’ll date you.”

Victor doesn’t answer by speaking. He answers by slipping an arm around Yuuri’s waist and pulling him that last centimeter in, and they’re plunging, diving, submerging, _drowning_ ; Yuuri _really_ loves the way it feels when Victor hums and smiles against his lips. It’s a rush to his body no amount of danger could ever hope to compare to.

 

 

“Yuuri!” Phichit’s voice calls from the background. They hardly separate; Victor’s lips at the corner of Yuuri’s mouth like he doesn’t want to let go. “Yuuri, hurry _up!_ We have shit to do! You guys are gonna see each other again!”

Yuuri turns back to place one chaste peck on Victor’s soft mouth. Victor rests his forehead against his, and together they ignore the sound of Phichit insistently honking the car horn. “As first kisses go, this is awfully cheesy.”

Nodding, Victor huffs with laughter. “Yeah, but—” He stops to stare openly at Yuuri. “Wait, did you say first?”

“Yes?” Yuuri looks at him quizzically. “It’s not my first first kiss, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, I mean—that night after the strip club. We kissed three times!”

“What.”

“Yes, yes, before we entered the chapel, because you insisted on doing that much, then when the little man dressed as cupid said, ‘You may now kiss the groom.’ And when we walked back to my hotel room—”

“Oh, no.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t remember any of it?” Victor asks, wide eyes, tilted head, questioning.

“Uh. Well.”

“ _Yuuri_ ,” Phichit impatiently shouts again.

“I’ll text you!” Yuuri says, already running towards Phichit, leaving a very distraught Victor in front of the doorway. Mila and Chris and Georgi are all standing at the entrance, patting his shoulders in consolation. Yuuri doesn’t hear what they say, but he’s snickering at the amusement of it all.

“Blue Eye’s a catch,” Phichit says, smirking at the open-book face Yuuri is probably making right now as they back away from the driveway.

Yuuri waves at Victor, and Victor waves back, keeps waving until the road dips into a hill and they’re out of each other’s sights. Then Yuuri sinks into his seat. “He’s kind of insane. But he’s insanely cute, so.”

“Ha,” Phichit steps on the gas when there’s nothing but clear road ahead. He sticks his tongue out at Yuuri teasingly. “Gross.”

✂

Yuuri walks into the De La Iglesia estate, a hotel and casino. The music from the casino leaks into the lobby as Yuuri makes his way through—hears it drift into the distance as he goes up the elevators, and the sound is replaced by Phichit rattling off reminds of his objective in his ear.

Get Leo de la Iglesia, and get out.

Should be easy.

Would be easy, if he hadn’t stepped into his hotel room on the eleventh floor, and stare right into the terrifying-like-a-barrel eyes of Victor.

And he has a gun pointed right at Yuuri.

Yuuri doesn’t duck and cover this time. He kicks the door closed, slides his weapons bag onto the carpeted beige floors. Pretends to throw his hands up like he’s been caught red-handed as he makes the short, treacherous hike to where Victor is standing. Victor looks serious. But his eyes are glinting like he wants to laugh.

“Did you plan this?” Yuuri asks as he runs the tip of his finger against the long, sleek gun barrel, coaxing it—and Victor’s guard—down. He steps even closer, right into Victor’s space, close enough to steal his breath away. “This is an awful case of déjà vu,” he whispers.

Victor’s breath is right on him, brushing against his lips like a dangerous kiss. “I’ve got you right where I want you, spouse of mine.”

.

.

(It’s been six months.

He still hasn’t gotten that annulment.)

✦

**Author's Note:**

> it's finally DONE, GOD. i agonized over this for so many weeks!! i'm really happy that i managed to finish it despite wanting to strangle the heck out of it while writing.
> 
> thank you to Orange, QQ, and [Haley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumgravity/pseuds/quantumgravity) for beta reading for me! and thank you [Void](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoidGlasses/pseuds/VoidGlasses) for reading the first half of this mess and reassuring me that it wasn't as awful as i kept telling myself it was. y'all are the best. ♥
> 
> i'm really grateful that i got to be apart of this bang event 'cause i met some really rad people who helped me along the way. thank you guys so much for sprints & support!


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